Cross-regional Workflow Architecture Based on Flexible Data Management

In the past few years there has been an increasing interest in distributed workflow management technology for the requirement of supporting business process in modern corporations. As the process in large enterprise tends to be across many branches which are distributed over a wide geographic area and have their own IT infrastructures, the current workflow management systems do not have sufficient capabilities in controlling data flow between the workflow engine and applications, decreasing the reusability of the workflow components and the existing information systems. Therefore we propose a cross-regional workflow architecture, in which the workflow model is designed cooperatively by multiple servers, based on a flexible data mapping model to improve the reusability of the workflow applications. A real-world scenario which is built and implemented based on this architecture is shown to prove the effectiveness and usefulness of the architecture.